Silicon Valley Reads

2010 celebrated the eights year of Silicon Valley Reads, which is cosponsored by the Santa Clara County Office of Education, Santa Clara County Library and the San Jose Public Library Foundation.  The goals of the program are to promote reading and literacy while building community among widely-diverse readers.  This year companion books were selected that embraced readers of all ages.

The Silicon Valley reads 2010 selection was “In Defense of Food:  An Eater’s Manifesto” by Michael Pollan.  Real food – the kind of food your great-grandmother would recognize as food – is being undermined by science on one side and the food industry on the other, both of whom want us to focus on nutrients, good and bad, rather than actual plants, animals and fungi.

According to author Michael Pollan, the rise of “nutritionism” has vastly complicated the lives of American eaters without doing anything for our health, except possibly to make it worse. Nutritionism arose to deal with a genuine problem – the fact that the modern American diet is responsible for an epidemic of chronic diseases, from obesity and type II diabetes to heart disease and many cancers – but it has obscured the real roots of that problem and stood in the way of a solution.

In 200 pages, Pollan outlines the challenge and offers a straight forward manifest – “eat food. Not too much.  Mostly plants.”   -- as well as practical advice on how to accomplish these deceptively simple goals.

To learn more about the 75+ programs, lectures and events surrounding Silicon Reads 2010, go to www.siliconvalleyreads.org.